The heavy velvet drapes of the Moretti nursery blocked out the midnight fog rolling off the harbor, but they couldn't muffle the shrill, desperate wails of the triplets.

The private study on the third floor of the Moretti estate was bathed in the harsh glare of a single desk lamp. Outside, the rain lashed against the reinforced glass windows, mirroring the violent storm brewing inside the room.

Marcus Vance, Head of Domestic Operations, sat rigidly in a leather armchair. His expensive tailored suit was slightly rumpled, and a thin sheen of nervous sweat coated his forehead. Standing near the fireplace was Julian Cross, adjusting his gold-rimmed glasses with fingers that trembled ever so slightly.

The heavy oak door swung open.

Adrien Moretti stepped inside. He didn't sit behind his massive mahogany desk. Instead, he walked slowly toward the two men, his dark eyes locked onto Marcus with the terrifying focus of a starving tiger circling its prey.

In Adrien’s right hand sat a heavy, polished silver revolver—and right beside it on the tray carried by Dominic was a small Ziploc bag containing the three bugs ripped from the nursery cribs and the cloth doll.

"Gentlemen," Adrien said softly, his voice dangerously low. "It’s 3:00 AM. A bit late for a management review, wouldn't you say?"

Marcus forced a tight, brittle smile. "Boss... Dominic woke us up saying there was an emergency in the nursery. Is everything alright with the twins?"

Adrien stopped two feet away from Marcus. Without a word, he slammed the Ziploc bag down onto the coffee table right in front of the older man.

Marcus flinched. His eyes dropped to the tiny black bugs and the mutilated doll. Color drained entirely from his face, leaving his skin a sickly, gray tone.

"Recognize them, Marcus?" Adrien asked smoothly.

"I... I don't—what am I looking at, Boss?" Marcus stammered, his voice cracking.

Adrien didn't answer with words. He reached out with lightning speed, grabbed Marcus by the lapels of his expensive suit, hauled him out of the chair, and slammed him against the wooden bookshelves with enough force to rattle every volume on the shelves.

"Boss!" Julian Cross shouted, stepping forward with a look of feigned outrage. "You can't just assault senior personnel without due process! Let him go!"

Adrien shot Julian a glacial glance over his shoulder. "Shut your mouth, Julian, unless you want your own files tossed onto this desk next."

Julian froze, his mouth snapping shut as he took an involuntary step backward.

Adrien turned his attention back to Marcus, whose feet were dangling slightly off the floor. "Three months of night terrors. Three months of my children screaming their lungs out while your security logs showed 'all clear.' You didn't just bypass the system, Marcus. You built the blind spots into the firmware."

"It wasn't me!" Marcus choked out, gasping for air as Adrien’s grip tightened around his collar. "I swear to God, Boss! It was an outside contractor! A tech firm based in Zurich—they handled the smart-home integration last year!"

"Name?" Adrien growled.

"Vanguard Security Solutions!" Marcus wheezed, thrashing weakly. "They... they approached me six months ago. They said... they said they wanted data on early childhood psychological resilience under controlled acoustic stress! They paid me half a million dollars just to give them backdoor access to the nursery network!"

Adrien’s eyes narrowed into deadly slits. "Resilience testing? On infants?"

"They’re developing a neuro-acoustic pacification weapon for private military contractors!" Marcus blurted out, tears springing to his eyes as oxygen ran low. "I didn't know they were going to put bugs in the cribs! I thought it was just software diagnostics!"

Adrien let out a dark, humorless laugh that sounded like shards of glass grinding together. "Software diagnostics. You sold my children out as lab rats for a weapons manufacturer."

With a flick of his wrist, Adrien hurled Marcus across the room. The man crashed into a glass coffee table, shattering it into a thousand glittering shards. Marcus groaned, curling into a fetal position on the floor amid the debris, bleeding from a dozen superficial cuts.

Adrien turned slowly toward Julian Cross.

The legal counsel was shaking visibly, pressing his back flat against the marble fireplace mantel as if he could melt right through the stone.

"Julian," Adrien said, his voice dropping into a hypnotic, lethal whisper. "You’ve handled my legal affairs for fifteen years. You knew about Vanguard Security, didn't you? In fact, you drafted the shell-company contracts that funneled their payments into Marcus’s offshore accounts."

Julian swallowed hard, his throat bobbing frantically. "Adrien... listen to me. We can fix this. Vanguard is just a front for a much larger consortium. If you go after them, you’re touching people far more powerful than the Moretti syndicate—"

"There is no one more powerful than me in my own house," Adrien interrupted. He drew the silver revolver from his holster, the metallic click echoing loudly in the quiet study. "Dominic."

"Boss?"

"Take Marcus down to the basement vault. Tie him to a chair and call Dr. Vance—not the pediatrician, the other Dr. Vance. Tell him we need a complete neurological extraction protocol. I want every single name, server location, and employee ID connected to Vanguard Security before the sun comes up."

"Understood," Dominic said grimly, hauling the groaning Marcus up by his arms and dragging him out of the study.

As the heavy oak doors closed behind them, Adrien turned his piercing gaze back to Julian Cross. The lawyer looked like a man facing the gallows.

"As for you, Julian," Adrien murmured, walking slowly toward his former friend with the revolver raised. "You're going to sit at that desk, open your terminal, and transfer every single cent of Vanguard’s corporate accounts into an irrevocable trust fund bearing my children's names. And then..."